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Re: help with story-telling
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Stan Spiegel
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Mar 07, 2004 14:49 PST
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You've been very inventive and wide-ranging in your storytelling. Good work.
You haven't lost your credibility. I had a much smaller number of stories I
told my kids -- and they loved the retelling every time. They still tell me
(my son is 31 and my daughter 33) how they loved my story of Dominic
Alphabet Varisco -- a Nose and his adventures in NYC.
You know what else they still remember with pleasure? I would read their
books to them -- and begin fabricating sentences and stories right in the
middle of the book they already knew by heart. They would jump me and say:
"Hey! It doesn't say that. Where does it say that?" And then we would start
tickling each other and we were through.
I wish I had you as a father. You're a great storyteller.
Stan Spiegel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mirembe Nantongo" <nant-@comcast.net>
To: <lit-i-@topica.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 5:22 PM
Subject: [Lit-Ideas] help with story-telling
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When my son asks me to tell him a story I sometimes have to feel my way
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carefully. Normally required are good guys and bad guys and some sort of
fright followed by a fight (using swords, spears, guns or wits) and final
victory for the good guys. Unlife-like perhaps, but what the heck, the kid
is three. And it sounds easy enough, but the devil is definitely in the
details. Sometimes he will say, Tell me a story about Strong Dominic Who
Lives In A Cave On The Side Of A Mountain With His Pet Monkey Snuff And His
Pet Gorilla Bananas, at which point I am home free. Sometimes, unhelpfully,
he will just say, tell me a story. At these times I had better not start
with a Strong Dominic story when what he wants is a story about A Lone
Dinosaur Called Philip Who Lives With His Mom In New York, or about Sam The
Mountain Lion Who Fights Mad Hyenas (with a sword) Every Monday. So,
usually, lots of preliminary questions, which he answers readily, thereby
telling half the story himself and giving me a solid start, which of course
works for me. Today, however, after much toing and froing, we had reached a
point where we had Power Rangers all over the place in a, to me, highly
confusing scenario. Dominic was in a touchy mood and this was a pre-nap
story. I was anxious to get everything just right so I could get on with my
Arabic homework while he slept. We had a Dominic Power Ranger (red) and a
Pegasus Power Ranger (blue), fair enough. But then suddenly we had two Hydra
Power Rangers. Hydras, at least in my experience, are always bad news,
while Power Rangers are normally good news. "So are the Hydra Power Rangers
good or bad Power Rangers?" I asked, cautiously. And he said, impatiently,
"The Hydras are not good Power Rangers or bad Power Rangers, they're happy
Power Rangers."
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Dominic & Pegasus versus the
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Hydras-who-are-not-good-nor-are-they-bad-they-are-happy??
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Thrown for a loop by this sudden demand for/espousement of moral
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ambiguity, I muffed it sadly, fell into considerable disgrace and only
purchased homework-time by reading a long long long story written by someone
else (Jean de Brunhoff if you must know).
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As many will know, these are one- or two-minute stories, never long, they
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just have to be right. I am hoping that some kind Lit-Idear with experience
of or insight into 3 yr old minds will send me by return email a draft of
the correct version of the story outlined above so I may regain my lost
parental credibility. Live experimentation will be carried out and results
faithfully reported.
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Sincerely, MN
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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